Thursday, March 9, 2017

"An Unsolicited Assertion"

Warning:Although peripheral to this story, the name
Bill Cosby will be prominently invoked, on whose predicament I have nothing to
say beyond “Due Process.”The story is
primarily about me.

“No.Really?”

If you choose, you can
replace his name in this story with any superstar with whom one is about to
collaborate.Bill Cosby just happens to
be the superstar in mine.

Okay.

I had been invited to Bill Cosby’s house for dinner, along
with The Cosby Show co-owner (with partner
Marcy Carsey) Tom Werner who drove me there because it was dark and my driving
is hazardous enough in the daytime.“Night Blindness” is an actual condition, affecting distance
perception.You hit the car in front of
you before you think you are going to, which, being unfortunate and costly, is
also genuinely surprising.

Filling out the list of invitees were a handful of executives
from Jell-O – for which Cosby was
then the commercial spokesman – all of whom were African-American, a fact I
mention as no meaningful racial distinction beyond the fact that Cosby
presented them all with cigars but not us.(Until, unwilling to be left out, I asked for one.“What kind would you like?” Cosby inquired,
ushering me through his commodious basement humidor.To which I knowledgeably replied, “I want one
that is not too big for my face.”)

This dinner was in fact not
Bill Cosby’s and my initial encounter.We had been introduced earlier over the telephone at the “Carsey-Werner”
production offices, where I, as the show’s Executive Producer, tried to persuade
Cosby – carefully selecting my words which did not include the following – that
it seemed jarringly ostentatious that the professional parents on The Cosby Show portray a doctor and a
lawyer.(Especially after I had learned
that Cosby had originally proposed that the character he would play on the
series be a limousine driver.)

“How about you’re a doctor and she’s a college
professor?”I politely proposed.

To which, as if he were carrying four hundred years of
discriminatorial condescension on his back, Bill Cosby wearily replied,

“I’m a doctor and
she’s a lawyer.”

If you know anything about the show, you are aware of who
prevailed in that particular difference of opinion.

So there I am, dining at a star’s house, who I am about to
work with and hope to establish a rapport.If not actual trust and mutual respect.

I shall now jump to the end of the evening, as this is where
the retroactively regrettable incident in question took place.

But first, some explanatory background.

During the pre-production period for the series, which we
were then currently involved in, I had written the First Draft of a script­
(entitled “Good-Bye, Mister Fish”, an irrelevant allusion to “Good-bye Mr.
Chips”, as it did not concern a
beloved schoolteacher but was instead about the youngest daughter “Rudy’s” goldfish
dying and “Dr. Huxtable” insisting the family put on their best clothes and
stage a formal memorial funeral for the departed pet, standing over the toilet in
the bathroom.)

I had brought a copy of “Good-bye, Mr. Fish” to the dinner,
where I presented it to Cosby, and, since he was about to leave town and I
needed time to revise it to his specifications before the punishing onslaught
of actual production, I proposed, during dinner, that I return the following
morning, to receive Cosby’s ameliorating “notes.”Cosby initially resisted but I insistently
stood firm and he ultimately agreed.

Okay, back to the end of the evening.

There were the cordial goodbyes, after which Tom Werner and
I exited the front door.Suddenly, I
stopped.Something was seriously bothering
me.

I asked Tom Werner to wait; I needed to go back inside and
talk to Cosby.I then returned to the
house, where I walked up to our former-football-player-and-still-
formidable-looking host and I said,

“Can we go someplace for a minute and talk?”

An amiably perplexed Cosby took me into a nearby den where
he closed the door for my requested conversation.Although that talk could have easily veered
in the direction of, “You do not make demands of an international superstar.And by the way, you’re fired.”

It did not go that way.I had Cosby’s nodding permission to proceed.

A pertinent digression:

Writer and commentator Michael Kinsley had this line about
“gaffes”, ascribed to a Washington “Beltway” context but it could just as easily
apply anywhere.

During our personal conversation, I revealed something
inarguably inappropriate to a major star I was meeting for the first time who
had lavishly fed me and had given me a cigar, concerning our upcoming
collaboration, which I sensed from his reaction to my suggested “notes session”
would be precariously onerous, unless I immediately nipped the potential
difficulty in the proverbial bud.

What I wanted to convey was, “Series television is a
terribly arduously undertaking and we need to work cooperatively to make things
as manageable as possible on both of us.”What came out, however, was

“I do not want to die.”

That’s what I told a powerful stranger.

And like all gaffes, I meant it.(Note:It turned out, when I departed The
Cosby Show after its first seven episodes of production, I felt
unexaggeratingly like I might die.)

2 comments:

Now I'm going to tell you a story. Yes, I'm going to tell YOU! a story. You just wrote on the electronic diary about the time me and Camille invited you to our house. NOW! When you got to the house Camille was in the kitchen and she was cooking the food, she was stirring the pots and the pans and making the bread and watching the oven and I'm in the den watching the ESPN and my wife says "Bill can you answer the door", and I said "Is there someone at the door", and she says "Bill go to the door" so I went to the door, NOW! I get to the door and there was Earl Pomerantz just standing at the door with a bottle of wine in the one hand and a script from my TV show in the other hand.

We can't shake the hands because Earl's hands are full of the stuff, so I take the stuff and invite Earl to sit down in the den to watch the ESPN. NOW! Earl says I should read the script about the goldfish before the dinner and I said maybe I'll read it after the dinner. Then my wife Camille comes into the den and turns off the ESPN and says the dinner is being served in the dinner room. We get to the dinner room and Camille is putting the food on the dinner table, shes putting on the meat, shes putting on the potatoes, shes putting on the carrots and Earl Pomerantz looks at the meat, he looks at the potatoes, he looks at the carrots and he says "I do not want to die!"

NOW! My wife Camille is crying about the comment and my boy Ennis comes down from the top and says "Pop, why is my Mom crying?" and I say "Go to the bed Ennis", and the boy says "Pop, did the man make my Mom cry", and I said "Yes son, the man made your Mom cry". NOW! I turned to the Earl and asked him to get out of the house with the wine and the goldfish script and cigar I gave him. I said to the Earl, "Get the fuck out of the house". He left the house and we ate the dinner and I had to fire the man from the TV show.